Book excerpt: Speech, Music, Sound presents an entirely original approach to the theory of sound. Drawing on a wide range of phonetic, linguistic, pragmatic, semiotic, and musicological sources, it concentrates on the communicative roles of aural perspective, rhythm, melody, and timbre in music as well as speech, everyday soundscapes, and film and television soundtracks. It applies linguistic concepts such as turntaking to music, and musical concepts such as harmony to speech. And it also contains a chapter on aural realism, again in relation to music, speech, and contemporary sound design.